


The Middle Ground

by ayortha



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: after season 8 we give it another go around, sansa has the spotlight right now but many others are coming
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-20 18:22:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18998032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ayortha/pseuds/ayortha
Summary: You win... or you die... or...Two weeks after Sansa is crowned Queen in the North, she falls asleep in her bedroom at Winterfell. She wakes up in an unfamiliar commoner's home in King's Landing... not the King's Landing of smoking rubble, but the King's Landing of Robert's reign. In a body she doesn't recognize, Sansa is about to see the life she's lived from a new angle--and a distance.And she's not the only one.With seemingly nameless commoners who know exactly what's about to happen around every corner, what can be done? What can be stopped? And what will become of the Iron Throne?--This is my attempt to use season 8 as a starting place to revisit and reimagine the arcs of a handful of major characters. With everything they've learned and all they've become, what would they do differently? What will happen in round two of the game of thrones?





	The Middle Ground

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't selected warnings or many tags because I'm posting as I go and I'm not sure yet exactly how things will go. 
> 
> Forecast says cloudy with a good chance of violence and character death. (Obviously all canon character death has a good chance of happening on-page here again, with additional deaths always a possibility). There may be sexytimes, but don't expect it to be a main focus.
> 
> This chapter only has a few characters more or less on their own, but many additional friends will be coming.

When Sansa woke the first morning, not recognizing the room that surrounded her, adrenaline spiked through her body. Just out of sleep, joints creaking, she pushed herself out of the low, hard bed--a bed she had never seen before--and reached for the battered wooden door. It took barely a single step to cross the tiny bedroom, push through the door, and cross the stuffy, narrow house to the half-open front door.

She spilled out onto the sunlit street, reaching out to break her fall. Her hands slammed onto the cobblestones and she scrambled to her feet, casting her gaze around wildly for the predator her body was sure must be coming. There must have been something. A demon, an animal… _a man_. Someone had taken her. Taken her from her home, her kingdom, her throne. Where was she? Who had brought her here, and where were they?

But as Sansa gasped for breath, as she looked around and saw no one behind her in the house, no one around her in the narrow alley she found herself in, her heartbeat began to slow.

There could not be danger, for this was not real. This could only be a dream. As Sansa carefully stepped out of the alleyway and into a smelly, bustling road, her eyes confirmed what her other senses had already told her.

The red-roofed houses and crowded streets. The ringed collars and the stomach-turning smell.

This was King’s Landing.

So this could only be a dream. Sansa forced herself to take deep breaths, letting her body settle in her knowledge she was safe at Winterfell. It was only her mind that was walking the streets of King’s Landing as they once were, before a dragon with a dark smile had wiped it from the map.

But there was more. The clear streets and relaxed people… this wasn’t just the city of the past. It was the city of the long past, before the riots and chaos of Joffrey’s reign. Before even Robert? No--that was Lannister red in fashion among the people pushing past her in the street. This couldn’t have been long before Sansa herself came to the city for the first time.

Sansa spent the morning wandering the street, winding her way through the busy people who had no idea their days in this city are numbered. After only an hour or so, however, she was already tiring. Her body felt strange--it was the uncooperativeness that bodies sometimes had in dreams, where you tell them _walk_ and they just sort of float in place. Her joints still felt stiff and the tight coil of her hair was giving her a headache.

After a few wrong turns, Sansa found her way back to the little house where she had woken up, the home that this dream-version of herself seemed to live. She walked the small living space--the only room apart from the bedroom--slowly, running her fingers gently over the stone mantle and wooden cupboards.

She found her way back to the bed and let fatigue drag her back down onto the rough straw-filled mattress. It was for the best; she knew going back to “sleep” would be the quickest way to wake up in reality, back in Winterfell. She had been captivated at first by the sights and sounds of this long-ago capital, but the longer she spent in the dream, the more she could feel her heart being dragged back into a place of smallness and pain. She curled up at the head of the bed, closed her eyes, and was gone at once.

When Sansa woke up the second morning, she knew this could be no dream. She was really in this place, this reborn King’s landing. And in that moment, when nothing made sense, when space and time and reality had ceased to function as Sansa had ever known, all she could think was that there was no Stark in Winterfell.

A different kind of fear launched her out of the bed this time. Sansa sprinted to the cupboards and searched frantically through the house’s meager possessions, throwing out blankets and baskets until finding the best she could: a thin metal disk that had probably once been a plate.

She spat on the dingy silver surface and rubbed it with her sleeve, desperately trying to find a shine in the battered plate. She lifted it before her to catch the light. The reflection she saw looking back at her was faint, but it was enough to for Sansa to know it was very, very wrong.

Heartbeat accelerating, Sansa peered at the hands holding the plate. They were close enough that she hadn’t noticed the difference at first, and after all, don’t you always look just a little bit wrong in a dream? But when she took the time to look, Sansa could see a different shape to the wrists. Shorter fingers, bitten nails. A slightly darker shade of skin.

The plate clattered to the wood floor and Sansa’s hands flew to her head, fingers working until she released a tumble of long, tangled hair. She pulled a strand in front of her eyes, praying to see muted red but knowing in her heart it wouldn’t be.

When she saw the sandy dark blonde of her now curly hair, Sansa swayed on her feet for a moment before everything went black.

Sansa dropped to the floor. It was a much shorter trip than it used to be.

 

* * *

 

 When Arya woke that first morning, she had known at once something was deeply wrong. The deep sway of her ship was gone, replaced with the jumpy rock of the hammock she was cocooned in.

She didn’t move. Eyes closed, she took deep, even breaths through her nose as she concentrated on listening to the sounds around her. She knew those sounds, had heard them in their many incarnations in port cities and crowded markets. Footfalls and laughter and money changing hands. It was calling and chatting and whispering. Speech… speech in a language she didn’t know. A rough language of deep _d_ s and guttural _r_ s and sharp _k_ s.

But also other words. Words she had heard in Braavos. Words she had heard at home. Many languages. This was the sound of a crossroads.

Arya reached to her side, to the hip where she knew she would always find Needle. Not only was her sword not there, but her hand got there much faster than it should have. Still with closed eyes, Arya stretched her arms at her sides. The distance from her shoulder to her elbow, from her elbow to her wrist, from her wrist to the tip of her fingers… these were facts she knew like her own pulse. The stretch of the muscles in her arms, the flick of her fingers--these made up the essential geometry in Arya’s world. It was life and death. So when it was wrong, Arya knew.

And now, it was wrong as it had never been before.

Slowly, subtly, Arya ran her hands up and down her sides. She felt the sides of the thick hammock and smoothed her strange, silky clothing, looking for any sign of a weapon. She found nothing but a braided leather belt cinching her waist. A waist that cinched all on its own, it seemed.

With one last deep inhale, Arya opened her eyes, knowing that the body she was in was not her own, knowing that the land she was in was not her own. But she had seen strange and lived wonders. This was a mere displacement. And when she opened her eyes and saw a dusty blue sky, Arya knew that she could see, that she could hear and taste and feel and smell, that she could mover her hands and feet and use her voice, and that meant that this was nothing she couldn’t handle.

Arya opened her eyes to the sound of drums.

It took only hours for Arya to learn her way around, to trace routes and counter-routes and escape routes around this strange, wild city where men of many lands traded salt and silk brought across a sea of grass.

By the time Arya woke on the second morning, the hammock was hers. The small pack of belongings she had found beneath it was hers. And the jagged piece of glass she had wrapped with leather for a handle was hers as well.

With one hand always on her makeshift knife beneath her silk garment, with ears open and eyes wary, Arya reached the center of the city whose name she still did not know.

The sound of drums and joyful, violent vocalizing drew her to a round building in the center of the tent city beside the marketplace. She pushed through a curtained doorway and shouldered her way past whooping men with painted faces until she could see the object of their fascination.

In the center of the circle, dressed in braided grass, a small girl with long blonde hair kneeled, gagging. Arya looked about, searching for a reason all these people were standing and watching this girl about to be sick.

But she wasn’t. She stood, and the crowd screamed, and an enormous man with a long braid lifted the girl into the air.

As they spun slowly in place, the girl’s face came into view. Beneath the shining hair, beneath a coating of blood, was the triumphant face of the dragon who destroyed Arya’s brother.

 

* * *

 

Many miles away, another young woman woke in a strange body, breathing strange air and hearing strange sounds.

Cold air. Quiet sounds.

At the edge of the world, seven hundred feet in the air, Daenerys opened her eyes to snow.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello hello!  
> I'm a longtime reader and writer but this is my first time posting on here. I'd love thoughts and comments, especially if you have pointers for a newbie.  
> Next chapter should be up within the week.


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